Sir, – Congratulations on a thoughtful and informative souvenir supplement. I found the new proclamation (Editorial, March 26th) interesting and provocative. –Yours, etc,
ANNE BYRNE,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – I have read the new proclamation in Saturday's edition, and, in comparison to the original, I find it a sadly secularist declamation and not in the least imbued with the Christian values which The Irish Times is supposed to espouse. – Yours, etc,
AOIDHBHEN
Ó CURRAOIN,
Terenure,
Dublin 6W.
Sir, – The inclusion of summaries and commentary along with reprinted articles from 1916 in your souvenir edition is welcome. However, I have to take issue with one element.
Your timeline states, for 1921: “De Valera sends Michael Collins to sign Anglo Irish Treaty but then refuses to ratify it”. While I appreciate that some simplification is necessary, and these post-1916 events are not the main focus of this issue, this reference is misleading. It might be more accurate to say that a delegation (which many would say was led by Arthur Griffith) travelled to London to negotiate a peace treaty, which was subsequently rejected by de Valera and others.
Let’s hope that we can look forward to continued discussion, reflection and reinterpretation of these historic events as commemorations continue in the coming years. This will help us all to form a more rounded view of the roles of the different participants. – Yours, etc,
EMER NOWLAN,
Great-granddaughter
of Arthur Griffith),
Raheny,
Dublin 5.
Sir, – The article by Niall Humphreys was one of the most perceptive I have read on the commemoration of 1916 ("Relatives of those in the Rising have no greater role than anyone else", Opinion & Analysis, March 23rd). I would agree with his sentiments but would add the following thoughts. Those involved in 1916 seemed to have a vision of Ireland which omitted people of my family's ilk in the Ulster counties. My grandfather from Co Down, who served in the Boer War and the Great War with the Inniskilling Fusiliers, was such a man. His papers state that he was discharged in 1919 from Islandbridge, Dublin. Within a few years he was part of a different political dispensation as a moderate unionist who had originally a view of Ireland within the United Kingdom. The Rising and hence partition removed him from any broad concept of being Irish. Two monolithic states emerged, far removed from the ideas contained in the Proclamation – where all the children were to be cherished equally. We have been wrestling with the consequences ever since. The moral of the tale is that strong nationalistic and religious zeal, allied to violence or the threat of violence from both sides, led to the exclusion of many neighbours and friends who didn't fit the template exactly as envisaged by those advocating non-peaceful methods. Homogeneous states never really work. – Yours, etc,
IAIN KENNEDY,
Enniskillen,
Co Fermanagh.
Sir, – Is the inclusion of John Redmond, Daniel O’Connell and Edmund Burke in the 1916 commemorations the first attempt by a state to airbrush somebody into history? – Yours, etc,
JOHN KANE,
Limerick.
Sir, – I am growing tired of the many newspaper articles “apologising” for 1916. Are we now reinventing a reinvention of history to ease our collective conscience?
Meanwhile Civil War politics is alive and well. What hypocrisy. – Yours, etc,
ADRIAN O’CONNOR,
Tai Tam,
Hong Kong.
Sir, – Stephen Collins tries to put the 1916 Rising into historical context ("Our independence sprang from more than violence alone", Opinion & Analysis, March 26th).
This context involves the actions of the most powerful parliament and government in the world at the time.
Despite the fact that they had spent the previous 30 months putting the Home Rule Act through the imperial parliament, Asquith and the imperial government in London failed to implement the Act when it was finally passed in 1914.
The most powerful parliament in the world, which was making laws for and enforcing them on up to a quarter of the population of the globe, failed to implement an Act giving limited self-rule to the island of Ireland with a parliament in Dublin.
That failure undermined constitutional nationalism.
The subsequent resort to physical force by Irish nationalists, including the 1916 Rising, was the consequence. – Yours, etc,
A LEAVY,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.
Sir, – The leaders of the Rising were undoubtedly good and brave men, but the Rising was both pointless and harmful. It was pointless because by the middle of the 18th-century Irish civilisation had been extinguished by the English, through the suppression of the Catholic Church, and the dispossession and exile of the native Catholic aristocracy and their replacement with foreigners of an alien religion. All that remained by 1916 was a peasant culture, which is inherently limited and of little value. The Rising was an attempt to reanimate a corpse.
And in turn the Rising was harmful because the new state was dominated by, and reflected the values of, peasants and the lower middle class – anti-intellectualism, a limited vision, a narrow-minded distrust of anything new, and a suspicion of high culture and of joie de vivre. Unfortunately the Catholic Church had the same shortcomings. Its philistinism found particularly toxic expression in the liturgical horrors that followed Vatican II and the despoiling of churches by what the late Knight of Glin memorably called "ignorant and vainglorious parish priests".
I wish the English had not destroyed our civilisation. But the fact is they did, and it was gone forever. Nothing was gained by the Rising. We would have been better off with home rule. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’DONOVAN,
Murrintown, Co Wexford.
Sir, – Looking at the 1916 commemorations I am struck by the absence of the Catholic hierarchy, relative to the footage from 1966. The politicians are still in abundance. One wonders will this be the case in 50 years? – Yours, etc,
DAVID HACKETT,
Ballina, Co Mayo.
Sir, – On the centenary of the 1916 Rising, it is timely to reflect on one of the main aims of the leaders – the unification of this country. Readers will be aware that, as part of the Belfast Agreement, the so-called territorial claim in the Constitution was amended. In so doing, we did not abandon the six counties. In this regard, it is worth quoting from Article 3.1: “It is the firm will of the Irish Nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland, in all the diversity of their identities and traditions, recognising that a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island...”
I wonder will the above aspiration feature in discussions concerning the formation of a new government? – Yours, etc
NESSAN VAUGHAN,
Baldoyle, Dublin 13.
Sir, – On purchasing The Irish Times on Saturday, I was informed by the newsagent that the price had been increased to €2.70. However, when I got home I discovered that the front page was marked "One Penny". Which price should I have paid? – Yours, etc,
TONY CORCORAN,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 14.